warm sounding musical front ported active speakers

There's nothing wrong with putting rear ported speakers near a wall. I have my AudioEngine 5's about 1 inch from a wall.

From the opposite side of the room, it sounds like there's a sub when there isn't.

Basically, it uses the wall to resonant the sound from the port.

Get the A5's if I had to choose from your list.

Or the M-Audio BX5a's. Those are a good choice for actives as well.

People say the KRK Rokits have smoother highs than the A5's, but the A5's have the better overall low end sound.

The A2's don't have enough power. They sound like a big speaker, until you start to really turn it up.

I have KRK RP6G2 and they are extremely musical and sound great. They are pretty forgiving even though they're near-field monitors and I really enjoy them. One of my main reasons for getting these is that reviews said that they were very musical but clear and forgiving.  I was able to get mine from ZZsounds for $313 shipped, including the "Free G2 package" which includes stands and Mopads. You'll have to shop around for a price like this but a lot of places do price guarantees so you can ask around for lower than advertised price. The RP5G2s can be had for even cheaper and the only downside is a small woofer. 

I'd highly recommend testing these out. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by kitkat12012 

I am currently searching for a warm, musical, front ported active speakers and I'm wondering if you guys can give me a few brands/models to research.

I've been reading reviews the past couple of days and already have a few in mind but I just wanna expand my search a bit more before I decide.

I am going to use them solely for music listening, so something "musical" and not too "critical" would be ideal. Source is gonna be an ipod for now so I need it to be a bit forgiving of mediocre quality source.

I also want it to be warm and bassy, as oppose to flat and referencing like most of the monitors that came up in my search.
 

ESI nEar08

http://stereo.50webs.com

Many pro monitors want balanced connection.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kitkat12012 

I'm wondering though if a near-field monitor would be able to fill up half a room nicely. Like I said, I'm gonna be using this for my gym and I'm gonna be moving a lot around approximately half of the room so I would want speakers that can handle this space.
 

Pro-audio near-field monitors are as powerful as home HiFi speakers.

If your considering the krk you should consider the prodipe monitors, there basically the same expect the prodipes have more powerful amps and sound better in the midrange but there are a bit more netruel than the krks, i wouldn't consider any of these monitors "musical" or  "forgiving" the krks are probley the closest though cause they have a u shaped frequency curve, monitors are generally designed to be netruel and revealing, proper musical and warm speakers are speakers like the monitor audio bx2 http://www.monitoraudio.co.uk/products/bronze-bx/bx2/ , and wharfedale diamond http://www.wharfedale.co.uk/Products/ProductSeries/tabid/77/PID/166/language/en-GB/Default.aspx#detail , they are passives though your best bet for warm and musical monitors is the wharfedale 8.2 if there anything like the passives i'm not sure how well they do in a gym, is it a big gym? and do you need loud or moderate volumes? , the wharfedales claim 108dB peak spl @ 1meter there continus spl is likely somewhere around 100db, that wouldn't be enough for a large gym, you would need something like the krk gp8 or prodipes pro8 that have continues spl in the 105db per metre range and larger 8" drivers monitors aren't designed for high spl output. Small monitors would sound lost in large gym, large gyms generally use pa speakers for there high spl and large drivers.